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Original poster

Secondary school appeal help

80 replies

ForLilacSheep · 09/05/2025 13:14

I’m just writing to ask for a bit of advice. We have done a lot of digging into why we weren’t allocated a place at our local school mainly due to the fact that it was such a shock, and that we know that anyone from our address would have been offered a place at our preferred school for the last 10 years at least. For context there are only 6 schools within our education district and all are within the reasonable travel time for secondary schools from one end of the district to the other. From this investigating we have found out the following:

There was a “primarily unforeseen slight shortfall” of secondary school places within our district this year. (This has been confirmed to us by our local authority school place planning team)

As a solution to this the council asked each school in the district to take 5 children over PAN. (We’re not sure at what point this was decided or why they did not do what they state in their planning strategy, which is to put a bulge year in a single school to meet the need temporarily.) We are also fairly sure that the shortfall in places across the district was somewhere between 2 and 8 children.

We know that 18 children from within our preferred schools GPA (geographical priority area) were unable to secure a place at our preferred school based on their original PAN of 145. This subsequently reduced to 13 children once the additional 5 places were given. Only once before (in 2023) have they not been able to allocate all the children from within the GPA to our preferred school and this affected just 1 child.

We have now found out that the school we have been allocated, which has been deemed suitable for us, has not allocated all its places this year. It’s PAN is 150, and only 138 places have been allocated there for September 2025. We know that atleast 2 of the 5 schools within the district have offered 5 places over PAN. (Confirmed by the schools)

What we cannot understand is why some schools have been made to go over their PAN by 5, when there is a school in the district that has been deemed suitable for us which is undersubscribed and still 12 under PAN?

We believe that in doing this they have not only made it harder for people to appeal to those schools as the schools are able to say they are already 5 over PAN. But also that if there is a school which is deemed suitable for us, we cannot understand why those 12 places that are still available at that school weren’t allocated to children before they made other schools exceed their PAN? The schools that we know for sure have accepted 5 over PAN are community schools controlled by the local authority.

Please can you advise on this situation as we see this as being hugely unfair. If the local authority have asked schools to go over PAN to accommodate parental preferences, leaving one school undersubscribed, they must have done so because they deemed the school they have allocated us to be unsuitable for some children but not others.

can anyone shed any light on this situation?

To make it clear, we have a very good stage 2 argument to put forward specifically for our child but I’m trying to find out how this has been allowed to happen as it doesn’t seem to comply with the admissions code as it doesn’t seem fair, clear or transparent.

Thanks in advance.

OP posts:
SheilaFentiman · 09/05/2025 15:13

they must have done so because they deemed the school they have allocated us to be unsuitable for some children but not others.

Ummm... no, I don't think this is it.

It's possible that they asked around regarding a bulge class (which would presumably be up to 30 children), got a lot of push back and so split the 'possible 30' across all 6 schools, asking each to take 5 over PAN. This might have been done before any preferences were identified, just based on numbers of applicants in the system.

lanthanum · 09/05/2025 15:12

If they were that close to being able to offer everyone a place, then the chances are that by the time those going private have turned down their spaces, everyone will get a place.

So perhaps they should have just stuck to the original numbers, told the unlucky few that they didn't have a place yet, and then wait for the offers to be declined. At that point, schools start offering off their waiting list. School A has five spaces, so they offer them to those near the top, who then pull out from schools B and C, who can then offer spaces to five other kids, which perhaps makes another space in school A and a couple in schools D and E. Eventually the music stops and everyone has a place.

I can see some sense in suggesting schools go over their PAN. That way, when school A has five kids declining their places, they don't make any changes. It will cut down a lot of the chop and change, at the expense of some schools ending up with up to five more pupils.

Your child would have done no better if they had stuck to the original numbers. Some of their peers will have got in to a preferred school they might not have done otherwise, and some will have got in at the first pass rather than having to wait for the waiting lists to shift. And either way, the unpopular undersubscribed school probably remains undersubscribed, as it's likely that by the time the private school attendees are taken out of the equation, there are more places across the district than are needed.

Teenybub · 09/05/2025 15:12

What’s your appeal? I personally wouldn’t favour sending my child to a school already over pan because those extra few children in each classroom do make a difference. It probably sounds like a small amount but having that extra couple of children in my class has lots of small impacts- in an hour lesson it takes that extra bit of time getting them in and out, moving around the room to assist/check work/spot students struggling is that little bit more difficult and I’m more likely to miss something, for a one off lesson it’s ok but 25 hours a week for 5 years is a lot.

KilkennyCats · 09/05/2025 15:06

Surely the extra children included in the over PAN numbers were also higher priority than your child?
Those extra places will have been allocated in accordance with the admission code, just like all the other places.

TheSilentMajority · 09/05/2025 15:02

Sorry it’s been very hard to follow you but I think regardless - I am assuming if your preferred schools went 5 over PAN (you don’t say what PAN is but I am assuming it’s allocated numbers) …. And despite these schools going 5 over PAN your child was not allocated a space there than the kids that were one of those 5 live closer to those schools then you do … ? Unless what you are getting at is you feel you can not appeal as these schools are over subsribed already now.

To process things you might find it helpful to say what grounds you were going to appeal on and experienced others might be able to reassure you, regardless of these extra kids or not, an appeal might be unlikely to succeed?